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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26650084">memento mori</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/tangerinabina_de_archanea/pseuds/tangerinabina_de_archanea'>tangerinabina_de_archanea</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Azure Moon Route, Blood and Gore, Canon Divergence, Disturbing implications, Gen, Horror, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Suicide, the faerghus four perform necromancy (not clickbait! really works!)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 10:00:58</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,034</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26650084</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/tangerinabina_de_archanea/pseuds/tangerinabina_de_archanea</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em> Four children of Faerghus swear together, their hands intertwined and blood dripping from their fingers, that Glenn Fraldarius will live again, no matter the cost. </em>
</p>
<p>Felix, Dimitri, Ingrid, and Sylvain raise Glenn from the dead, and all is well... for a time.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Background Glenn Fraldarius/Ingrid Brandl Galatea, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd &amp; Felix Hugo Fraldarius &amp; Ingrid Brandl Galatea &amp; Sylvain Jose Gautier</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>44</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>memento mori</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>just a disclaimer: the ritual they perform has no relation to the thing with the cup from the DLC. i haven't played it</p>
<p>Thank you so much to Court @imagymnasia for being my beta!!! This fic wouldn't be the same without you &lt;3<br/>Go check out her stuff if you want more amazing Faerghus four content, especially Sylvain!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>It is Felix who mentions it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We can bring him back.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ingrid raises her head, her eyes red from sharpened tears and her starved limbs, neglected for weeks of isolation, trembling.</span>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dimitri stares, his gaze empty and his mouth silent.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“How?” Sylvain asks, and Felix’s breath carries from his tongue words dark and arcane, of raising the dead and of the terrible price of snatching a soul back from the Eternal Flames. What this price is, he knows not, for it was never written.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Four children of Faerghus swear together, their hands intertwined and blood dripping from their fingers, that Glenn Fraldarius will live again, no matter the cost.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They have no body to complete the ritual, only the memories of his cadaverous visage upon Dimitri’s eyes, and so they make their altar Glenn’s bed and their cathedral his bedroom, undisturbed since news of his death was received. The cavernous vacancy of the air is filled with candle smoke and whispered prayers, desperate sobs and pleading tears, moonlight and blood and sweat and fervent promises to the goddess on high that whatever the cost, they will pay it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sothis’s eyes shine with mercy upon her children, for when they raise their heads their smiles return and the only word upon their lips is, “Glenn!”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>It is a miracle, they say. Ingrid is smiling. Dimitri is laughing. Sylvain breathes easy, for his friends are happy again. Felix cries, but his tears are joyful, for his brother is alive.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>How wondrous it is, that Glenn has returned to them! They do not mind that their parents cannot see him, for that is their misfortune; let them shake their heads and whisper all they want about their children succumbing to lunacy. What does it matter when Glenn is alive, even if he only finds refuge in darkness and night? He simply prefers to keep to himself and the company of his four greatest friends. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>For years, the four want for nothing that Glenn does not provide. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When Ingrid falls from a tree, her family is certain that House Galatea’s final hope is dead, but then she rises, not a scratch upon her flesh or a bone split beneath her skin. It is Glenn who saved her, she joyously tells them, for it is his duty as a knight and her betrothed. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When Felix forgets his favorite sword in Fhirdiad, he hardly has time to weep, for the night’s shade has not even dispersed before it is returned to him, gleaming and somehow even more wonderful than before. It is Glenn who returned it, he tells his father, tears of relief in his eyes. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When Dimitri excels in combat at an impossible rate, many assume it is because of his tireless training, for his lance finds no rest and his mind no respite, as if he is a man possessed. It is Glenn who taught him so well, he corrects them all, for it is to him he owes his progress. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When Sylvain, being the eldest, is the first to grow from a boy to a man, he flits from bedchamber to bedchamber, any acts of retribution that might discourage him strangely absent. Even the relatives of the young women whose reputations he lays to waste speak only of him in whispers, afraid to say more. It is Glenn who protects him, he brags, as any older brother should.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Glenn is not the same.” Dimitri’s face is lined with worry and his eyes with pain; as he carefully observes his companion’s reactions, his fingers curl compulsively into fists.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ingrid’s smile, delirious as one on the cusp of waking from a happy daydream, fades from her features. Perhaps it is the drafty nature of the dining hall that causes such a chill to settle over their table, or perhaps it is the cold manner in which she glares at Dimitri.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What do you mean?” Sylvain asks, more interested than his dispassionate expression betrays.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The Eternal Flames changed him. I am sure of it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re the one who’s not the same,” Felix hisses, and yet there is a glint of terror in his eye at a truth he recognizes but will not accept. “Glenn is fine. Everything is fine.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re wrong.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Shut up, boar.” Felix takes his leave, his steps heavy with anger, and vanishes into the bright daylight. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dimitri turns to Ingrid, his eyes pleading. “Surely you have heard what he whispers at night. Do you not understand that you remain faithful to a dead man?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ingrid flushes, her eyes speaking of anger but her mouth betraying embarrassment. “How do you know about that?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Enough to know that Glenn-”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t want to hear it,” she snaps. “He died for </span>
  <em>
    <span>you</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Of course he’s changed!” Her palms meet the table and she, too, abandons the darkness of the dining hall for the blinding daylight.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“He’s different,” Sylvain agrees quietly, “but why worry? He helps us. I don’t want to give that up.” He joins Felix and Ingrid outside, leaving Dimitri alone.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>How odd that, in defending him, they would take refuge in the daylight, the only place that Glenn cannot go.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Across the dining hall, Glenn smiles.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Sylvain is the first to die. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It does not happen in the war; it happens at the bottom of a forgotten well at the edge of Garreg Mach’s grounds. He, too, would have been forgotten, had not someone passed by and caught the distinct odor of rotting flesh from the well’s depths. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The body is weeks old, according to the healers; it must be, for how else could it have reached such a state? And yet Ingrid and Felix dined with him the day before, and the young woman who spent the night in his bed tearfully swears that the last moment she saw him was when she left his room at midnight. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ingrid is the one who retrieves his body, at her insistence. She cries as he crumbles in her arms, the smell enough to make her retch and her eyes burn, and as she glances around at everything but his ruined features, she spies distinctive scratches- a “G” here, an “N” there- in the stone. She does not allow herself to ponder their terrible implications as they draw her upwards. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When she has returned to the daylight, she collapses over Sylvain’s body and curses him for his carelessness until her sobs run dry and her tears exhaust themselves.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>All Felix sees is a shock of red hair before he flees, his feet swifter than his intention to do so can form. He calls out to his brother in utter terror, afraid that he, too, will die, but when Glenn appears to him, his heart only beats faster and his body shakes more violently even as he begs for a comforting touch. Glenn’s fingers dig into his shoulders when he embraces him and draw blood, the same rusty red as Sylvain’s hair. In the shocking pain, Felix remembers Dimitri’s warning, but chooses to forget.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When Dimitri is told what happened, he says nothing, and turns back towards the cathedral’s ruined stained glass without the slightest change of expression.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>A fortnight later, Ingrid is the second. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The first sign that something is amiss is when hers and Sylvain’s horses are not fed their morning meal.The second is that, by lunchtime, she has not emerged from her room, nor does she answer any knocks upon her door. The third is the rumors that a woman, veiled with flowers and dressed in white, was glimpsed leaving the monastery the night before. Despite the darkness and concealing nature of her garments, many claim that she was blonde and sturdy of frame.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The search for her body is delayed by the fact that, when it is found upon the rubble in the cathedral, one can scarcely tell that it ever was a body. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Only her head and hands are undisturbed. On her face she wears a smile, peaceful even as her gored corpse and tattered dress are anything but, and on her hands a ring. Hidden between the flowers she clutches is a crumpled piece of paper, a marriage certificate bearing her own name and that of Glenn Fraldarius.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>All fingers point at Dimitri, and yet the likelihood of his involvement decreases by the moment. There is hardly a fresh speck of blood upon him, nor had anyone seen him leave the cathedral; besides, even the deranged prince could not have caused such injuries. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Despite this, Felix doubts Dimitri’s innocence, and confronts him while her blood is still fresh.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Why did you do it, boar?” he demands, his tongue sharp and biting, yet trembling with despair. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Why</span>
  </em>
  <span>?” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I did not.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Don’t lie to me. It had to be you. I want to know why!” With a sound akin to a growl, he seizes him by his cloak and pulls him down to meet his eyes. “Tell me!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I would not lay a hand on any of you,” Dimitri replies, his voice more subdued than usual before growing coarse, “unless you stood between myself and Edelgard.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And did they? Do I? Am I next, boar?” His fist clenches, nearly rending the fur from the skin. “If I am, then kill me where I stand, here and now! There’s no need to hide it anymore. Show them what kind of monster you are!” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Silently, Dimitri turns away from him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Do it, boar! Do it!” Enfeebled, his legs fall out from under him, bringing him to his knees. As his shaking hands find the flowers in Ingrid’s hair, still so fresh and pure beneath the spattered blood, sobs take him. “Why? Why Ingrid? Why Sylvain? Why not me? Why, Dimitri?” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Faerghus’s prince only stares on, silent as the grave, until his gaze falls upon Glenn, standing over Ingrid’s body with a ring of tarnished gold upon his slender finger.</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Dimitri is the third.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He is blamed again when Fleche is found dead, even if her wounds are beyond human capabilities. He does not defend himself, simply stating that they must carry on to kill Edelgard, and listens to no one; not the professor, not Rodrigue. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When he lifts his head after Edelgard falls, his father and stepmother smile at him, finally appeased, but Glenn does not. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Come, Dimitri. It’s over.” The professor tries to guide him away, but he does not listen. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Finally, I am free… she is dead. Are you not content at last?” Confusion seizes his features, and any trace of jubilation is lost. “What? What do you mean?” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Felix steps forward. “It’s over, boar.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dimitri is unhearing, unseeing, of anything but the ghost in front of him. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“But… I avenged you. I did everything you asked! What more could you possibly want?” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Boar!” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“One left responsible…? But who?” His grip tightens upon Areadbhar, a sinking realization dawning upon him. “I see… I understand now. I know what I must do.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Fine. Don’t come-“ </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dimitri lifts Areadbhar, raising it high above his head. “You have your revenge, Glenn.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The lance guts him before Felix can draw breath, and by the time Dimitri hits the floor, his last shuddering gasps have stilled.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>There is never a fourth. Felix lives. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He lives, knowing that he is the reason they are all dead. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mentions of his brother never pass his lips, except when they are screamed in nightmares, and his father, up until his tortured death at the end of a miserable life, stops asking. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The new Duke Fraldarius never marries; his only steady companion is the haunted look which mars his features and whispers of forbidden, unspeakable things, of the shadow that darkens each door he crosses and each room he inhabits. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He rules well, but is distant with all. Few are permitted to see him, but those who do speak of strange, enigmatic habits in hushed tones. The curtains always remain drawn, plunging the manor into a perpetual night lit only by flickering candles. An additional plate is always laid at the table for each meal, but for whom, no one knows. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Stranger still, he has cast aside his given name in favor of a new one, terrible in its familiarity and macabre in its origins.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>
    <em>Glenn.</em>
  </span>
</p>
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